Is your love HyperQBic?
Does it have the colorpuntal pearls of a ghost poem?
Here we go again.
I’m not thirsty, you’re thirsty
A TRACE OF IMPROVISATION
AS MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
“Didn’t I tell you what I believe,
did somebody say that . . .”
Sade
Apophenia,
once I knelt
before you nightly
to hum
your red carnation
& blue jasmine psalm
— a hummingbird
hovering for nectar.
Was it wrong
to want to believe
what you whispered
or seemed to whisper
in my ear?
Back then
my neck
needed nothing
except the lines
of Phrygian prayer
your magenta lips
traced at its nape
and my nipples
needed nothing except
the cornsilk calm
of your fingers
under our sheets.
But all moons must wane
and because of the shadow
box & double cross
of our lips
or because I failed
to heed your wrists
twin crave
for velvet-lined
police bracelets
and obsidian
prayer beads
your fingers
now trace
another man’s tattoos.
And not wane
as failure
but a decrescendo
in the key of F
I can hum
under my atheist breath.
Was our last adieu
a riff to resolve
in F flat
or a riff in the bass
to loop my faith
into a fugue in the rain?
Who knows
what any religion
needs beyond belief?
Perhaps now,
I believe nothing—
but some nights
the outer ear
of the moon
seems to find me
tuning my carnation
& cornflower guitar
to the notes
of blue jasmine
which remain
in our blankets
and sheets.
